HEN: heterogeneous experimental network

HEN is a facility for network research at UCL. It aims to permit
controlled and reproducible experimentation in a reconfigurable
environment, and thereby to bridge the gap between simulation and
real-world deployment. It represents a UCL strategic investment of £1M
with matching donations from vendors, and it is available for use by
all network researchers at UCL. HEN consists of

a switch with nearly 500 high-speed ports which can be
configured to simulate complex network topologies

roughly 80 nodes of assorted capabilities, which can all be
network-booted from a central server, allowing the experimenter to
quickly change the operating system of each node

a collection of motes with wireless interfaces, and wired
interfaces for instrumentation